Embodied Leadership Through Vocal Improvisation

Onome

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New York State, USA

Onome (pronounced like "On a May afternoon") designs and leads experiential workshops for a wide variety of audiences internationally at colleges, corporations, cultural centers, and retreats. She guides groups to confidently wield the power of their imaginations, innovate, cultivate embodied leadership, and foster creative fellowship with each other through mindfulness practices, relational games, and vocal play. As a vocalist and educator, Onome incorporates improvisation into her practice as a tool for consciousness expansion, creative expression, and personal development. She facilitates everything from immersive singing circles, concerts, poetry readings, panel discussions, experimental theater, and sound installations, to corporate trainings, professional development workshops for music educators, and hospice threshold singing. Through her audience-integrative experiences, Onome embodies joy, enchantment, connection, courage, and soul nourishment. She uses word / sound power to transport people to more enriching and dimensional experiences of themselves and each other. Onome grew up with her ear in multiple worlds, starting with the Nigerian lilt of her immigrant parents, and the African-American vernacular of her classmates. She got her start as a choir geek and embraced the eclecticism of folk, soul, spirituals, European classical chorale, rock, and hip-hop music that she grew up with in Chicago. She has performed sound poetry at hundreds of venues, recorded soundscapes for podcasts, and created vocal film scores. As a member of the activist choir Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, she opened for Neil Young during his tour, The Monsanto Years. She has led improvisational vocal gatherings with Sounding NYC, Make Music New York, UX All-Stars Project, Minnesota Music Educators Association, World Social Forum in Montreal, Climate Action Network Conference on Cortes Island, and Música do Círculo in São Paulo, Brazil. Onome brings over twenty years of experience in creative arts facilitation, across a diverse range of workshops and courses for both youth and adults. She has shared her curriculum design skills with several organizations, such as Teachers College-Columbia University, Juilliard, Música do Círculo in Brazil, Teatro Portapotese in Italy, and Bobby McFerrin's CircleSongs retreat at Omega Institute. She is a partner artist at Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute as a core member of the vocal improvisation ensemble, Moving Star. She contributes her performances and trainings across their vast educational programming spectrum.